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As the only female living in a house filled with testosterone, I feel qualified to comment on Dallas Morning News columnist Kay Hymowitz’s Feb. 1 analysis of “child-men,” modern twenty-something males who are reluctant to grow up.
Child-men, according to Hymowitz, focus less on careers and families than their 20th-century counterparts. Replacing these institutions are video games, sports and the pursuit of pretty girls. Men are waiting longer to get married, have children and start careers even as they approach their 30s. As a result, women are staying single longer, too.
I wonder if declining military enrollment has any correlation with the rise of first-person shooter video games. I like video games more than most girls, but the single-minded obsession I see in some of my male friends is scary. On more than one occasion I have entered a room to ask a question or make a comment only to be completely ignored. The house could be burning down and the boys would be rushing to finish their in-game missions. Just like in a football game, “five more minutes” of playing means waiting around for three or four times as long.
It’s not like I don’t reach out to them. I have video games, ones that allow for up to four players, but every time I suggest them, I get shot down. They aren’t violent enough, as if that is a prerequisite for fun.
Despite the ubiquity of video games, Sony and Microsoft are not single-handedly responsible for the decline in an interest in the real world.
Young people now need college to obtain a living wage career. Working full-time for a living wage isn’t feasible for full-time students, many of whom are in their mid-20s and older. Rent and health insurance are expensive, so young adults are staying tethered to their parents’ wallets and benefits for as long as they can. These child-men couldn’t afford to grow up even if they wanted to.
Hymowitz asserts that child-men spend much of their time hooking up with girls. This isn’t true. Many of my male friends seem confounded by and even oblivious to women. The games they play and the movies they watch are almost always lacking female characters who aren’t meant to be eye candy. Heaven forbid a female is the main character. If these guys weren’t so obsessed with macho posturing and playing the game of “my dick is bigger than yours,” I would almost think they were gay.
This may sound like the bitter ranting of a female who doesn’t understand the plights of the opposite sex. I do, but only to a certain extent. I can procrastinate just as much, if not more than my male friends. I let dishes pile up in the sink even though we have a dishwasher. I’m not financially independent, and I’m not sure of what I want to do after college.
The problem seems to lie in the options (and lack of them) given to today’s young men. Women’s entertainment still focuses on relationships and the maintenance of them, but media for young men encourage the escape from those responsibilities, and that escape often bleeds into real life. As Hymowitz wrote about the child-man, “he’s immature because he can be.”
The media targeted to 18-to-34-year-old men are unlikely to change their priorities. Boobs, bombs and booze will continue to dominate. If child-men are ever to grow up and make contributions to society, they must challenge themselves to escape from the temptations that lead them to escape real life.
That, from the perspective of the child-man, may be the most difficult game of all.
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